National political reporter

The clean energy industry has warned moves to abolish the target threaten more than $10 billion in investment and 5000 jobs. Photo: Reuters

The Abbott government is set to release its long-awaited review into the renewable energy target on Thursday.

Government sources said the review is expected to be released on Thursday afternoon, but it is unclear whether it will be published in full.

It comes as the clean energy industry demanded an investigation into the conduct of the inquiry and Greens senators called for the full contents of the report.

The review, led by climate sceptic Dick Warburton, considered a number of scenarios but is expected to settle on two recommendations.

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The first would suggest the renewable energy target be wound up for all but current participants in the scheme.

The second option recommends a scaling back from the current target of 41,000 gigawatt hours of renewable energy production annually by 2020 to about 27,000 GwH.

The government's response to the report is still some weeks away.

While Environment Minister Greg Hunt supports the RET and favours the scale back option, he faces a battle in the Coalition party room to win support for this option.

The clean energy industry has warned moves to abolish the target threaten more than $10 billion in investment, 5000 existing jobs and 18,000 jobs into the future.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has previously said the RET puts "significant" pressure on electricity prices but government commissioned modelling for the review showed that consumers would be $56 better off, on average, a year from 2021 if the target was kept in place.

Lane Crockett, executive general manager at Pacific Hydro, said a wind back of the RET would mean "a transfer of about $8 billion to existing gas and coal generators".

"This is a bizarre situation to be in – it was a promise by this government before the election to keep the RET," Mr Crockett said. "Frankly, if they do this, I would call for a Senate inquiry into what's gone on.

"There's certainly the numbers in the Senate to get an inquiry up."

Labor, the Greens and the Palmer United Party have all said they will block attempts to change the RET during this Parliament, meaning the government currently does not have support in the Senate if it wants to change the target.

On Wednesday, Greens leader Christine Milne said that attempts to change the target would be "economic vandalism" after the Senate passed her motion calling for the Warburton review to be released in full after weeks of speculation about its contents.

"They have caused such investment uncertainty and sovereign risk for the renewable energy industry that it is absolutely outrageous that they are sitting on this report," Senator Milne said.

"This is incredible that we have a government that says Australia is open for business and does everything it can to destroy an industry and the jobs associated with it."

Infigen Energy investor relations manager Richard Farrell said that, if the target was scaled back, companies that have invested in renewable energy would expect adequate compensation for the loss of revenue they would suffer.

He said suggestions from the government that renewable energy was driving up electricity prices were "a complete mistruth".

"The vast majority of people understand it's network costs that are the biggest contributor," Mr Farrell said.